The Beginnings of Space-Based Photoreconnaissance
Lundahl gathered the NPIC staff on August 19, 1960, to show them the images from the first photoreconnaissance satellite, Discoverer 14, to fly with its camera. Introducing "something new and great we've got here." First showing a map of the Eastern Europe USSR, which previously had had a narrow line of photography from a U-2 high-altitude photographic aircraft, the new one had eight broad swaths running north to south across the USSR and Eastern Europe, covering over one-fifth of their total area. They represented the regions that this single mission had photographed, and people broke out in cheers. Some photos were fogged by electrostatic discharges, but the resolution was 20 to 30 feet, which analysts described as "good to very good. "
Read more about this topic: Arthur C. Lundahl
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